The study of search engine optimization is without a doubt a very vast one. One of the many weapons that SEO practitioners usually use is a good domain name that is optimized for their SEO campaigns. You know what they say… “A good head start is half the battle won”. Hence if you are looking to do well with your SEO campaigns, you should get yourself a good domain name… one that the search engines will totally adore.

What are Search Engine Optimized domains?

Firstly we need to take a good look at what is defined as a Search Engine Optimized campaign. Well naturally the domain name has to be relevant to your product niche. Most SEO experts will agree that you should try to insert your keywords into your domain name so that it will give out a signal of relevance to the search engines. It would help if your product name itself contains the keywords as well.
Of course, we might not always be lucky to get a domain that you want simply because someone else has already taken a hold of it. Therefore when faced with situations like this, you should try to adjust or tweak your domain name a little to find a domain name that is still available for purchase.

For example, if you are in the gaming niche and you are looking to promote a game called ‘Call of Duty’ then you might want to consider a domain name such as ‘callofdutytricks.com’ or ‘callofdutytips.com’ that would do well. Of course, as mentioned before if would do even better if that’s the name of your product. Now if the keyword that you are targeting for being actually ‘call of duty tips’ then you can already see why your domain is much more relevant to what the searches done on that keyword. You will get a good head start with this search term.

Next is the age of the domain you are looking for. The age of a domain is important because the longer the domain has been used before the more chance it has to have been indexed before by the search engine and it might have a good standing record in the eyes of the search engine. Hence it would make it easier for you to rank them on the search engines later on. There are definitely domains out there that have expired but have already gotten a good existing page rank from the search engines. These are the kind of domain that you will want to look out for and these are the kinds of domains that are very valuable. Needless to say this kind of domain will have a much higher price tag. Do your research and buy accordingly.

Lastly you will want your domains to be using top-level domain such as .Com and .Net. These are viewed as the best kinds of domain and it is said to help get you more ‘priority’ when it comes to ranking your domain in the search engine results. Many top SEO experts will prefer to use these kinds of domains as opposed to the rest. Hence the smart thing to do is to choose these kinds of domains for your SEO efforts.
Why you need them?

Good question. And the obvious answer would be that when you are armed with a good and optimized domain, you should be able to rank higher on the search engines. Priorities will be given to a domain that is highly relevant to the search term and to a domain that has some age associated with it. Hence, try your best to buy a domain that is in these criteria because it could potentially save you a lot of trouble when you start your SEO efforts.

Where to find these domains?

There are actually many domain brokers and domain registrars that you can use to locate these valuable domain names. Mind you that some of these brokers may charge a tad bit too much from the usual price so you will have to be very diligent and only buy if you feel that the price is right. Now the next thing you need to be worrying about if you are buying an aged domain is that if that domain has any penalty for it? Sometimes some of these domains were banned by Google or other search engines before so it would be best to check first before making the final purchase.

How to check for penalties on older domains?

Now to test if there has been a ban on a domain before you actually make the purchase it to check the robot.txt file. Checking this will verify if your domain has been banned by a Google bot or not. The next thing you can do is to actually point a link back to the domain from a trusted site and see if Google will actually index it or not. This can quickly tell you if the domain is still in a tip top condition. If you are doing this right, you should see the domain indexed within 24 hrs. So now that you know how to test your domains, try your best to get a good domain every single time you look to start a new SEO campaign and you should see a significant difference in your rankings fast.

“Ladies and gentlemen… we are gathered here today for an event of the century because we shall find out who shall appear to be the better ‘tool’ for your marketing efforts between Pinterest and Facebook”. The rivalry between Pinterest and Facebook is clearly heating up. If you do not know who these two social giants are, it’s time you pay attention. While Facebook is much more established than has been in the industry for a longer period of time, Pinterest who is the newcomer and the challenger into Facebook is picking up its pace fast and gaining momentum every single day. So without further of due let us take a look at some of the side by side comparison that we did for these two social giants below.

Target Audience And Traffic Volume

In the first division, we will definitely have to look into the target audience and traffic volume on what these two big dogs in the social world bring to the table. Well for starters, here are some statistics that you can look at to help you understand the situation better. They’re approximately 900 million users online that uses Facebook and it is said that around 500 million of those people uses Facebook daily. If we compare this to Pinterest, where its users only have 10 million users, we then have a clear winner in this division. To make things worse, most Pinterest users are said to have a Facebook account as well.
What this ultimately means that when it comes to the amount of traffic and exposure that you will get from using Facebook is so much more when we compare it to Pinterest. Therefore it will make a lot more sense if you were to spread some content online virally Facebook is the place to do it. Hence one good argument here would be that if you are doing really well with Pinterest you might be able to do well on Facebook as well because you would essentially be able to reach every single person that you were able to reach on Pinterest on Facebook as well.

The infographic division

Infographics are the new way to present your information visually and interestingly. And the more you understand this and implement it in your business the more you will find your audience willing to absorb and engage you with colorful and interesting information that is well presented. It is said that a publisher who chooses to use infographics to grow their traffic is essentially gaining 12% more traffic than those publishers who don’t use infographics. What this ultimately means is that if you want more traffic, you should be trying to implement the use of infographics into your marketing efforts as well.
So we head back to the Pinterest and Facebook and take a look at the ability to present your Infographics within these two platforms. The clear winner here would be Pinterest because Pinterest seems to be able to allow a plethora of Infographics onto its platform with ease. Plus it can be used to present infographics without much flaw as opposed to the features available on Facebook where your pictures are cropped and resized automatically making it harder for the Posters make a ‘full’ infographic post and making it hard for readers to absorb the infographics optimally.

Interaction.

Social interaction seems to be a great way to improve the interaction between a company and its targeted users because this will ultimately help you with building a strong relationship with your business. Hence in the race for ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘comments’, the obvious winner here would go to Facebook because of the highly optimized buttons that is available on the Facebook platform.

Not only that, when it comes to social interactions, Facebook actually rewards the post that gets more interactions and thus helping you get your content viral and exposing it to even more people who are likely to enjoy your post as well. In this division, it is safe to say that Pinterest still have a long way to go before being able to compete at the same level as Facebook and hopefully we will be able to see a better improved Pinterest in this aspect in the future.

Cashing in…

Obviously this comparison would not be complete if we did not take a look into the monetization part. And the interesting thing here is that Pinterest has appeared to be a strong winner in this division that actually ‘matters’. Over 21% of the people who have seen a product posted on Pinterest actually bought the product. Now that’s what I call a good result. This kind of result is almost unheard of and it is something every marketer should be interested in.

The main goal of your marketing should always be driving sales and to be able to make use of a social platform that does drive sales make it a very powerful marketing tool that every marketer should not ignore. On Facebook however, one will find it hard to sell right off the bat and thus undergo a long process of introduction and nurturing of a prospect is required to turn him from a cold prospect into a fan and later turn them into a buyer.

Video division.

Last but not least we take a dive into the video division as we know that the power of a video is not to be underestimated. The interesting fact about a video in the marketing world is that 85% of the people online would be more likely to make a purchase online after getting exposed to a product video. This holds a lot of truth because the power of a video is undeniable with all the great visuals and audio being able to ‘attract’ attention like never before.

The good thing here is both Facebook and Pinterest has the full capability to utilize the power of Videos to help expose your brand and product to their existing audience. Hence in this division we end up giving it a tie between these two social giants.

Our verdict to this battle is that as a marketer although Facebook seems to have the upper hand in a lot of the comparisons we made, it is undeniable that one must not overlook the fact the Pinterest can in fact bring in more sales which is the bottom line of most small businesses today in a faster and easier manner. Hence test out both of these platforms and make use of their strengths to continue growing your business at a desirable rate.